ii4 LADY BEACONSFIELD AND HER TIMES

Wyndham Lewis, a man of property, would never have named her
joint executor if she had been a frivolous little feather-head.
Therefore, much against her inclination, for she had always
disliked the Welsh, Mary Anne journeyed to meet the Reverend
William Price Lewis.

Wyndham Lewis' estate, apart from the house in Grosvenor
Gate, did not comprise solely Welsh property; there was more
in Gloucestershire which belonged to Mary Anne's mother's
family, for Sir James Viney, in some emergency, had mortgaged
Taynton Manor to his niece's husband. It was this mortgage
which she foreclosed after her second marriage. Sir James
bore her no grudge on this account, for when he died in 1841,
he left her a thousand pounds.

The visit to her in-laws depressed Mary Anne very much,
and she confessed to Disraeli her annoyance at the pin-pricks
and petty annoyances with which she had to contend. This
called forth from him a reply far more lover-like than any of
his previous letters.

It is always highly significant when a man writes to a woman
for whom he has a great regard giving her good advice, taking
her quarrels on his shoulders, disliking the people she dislikes,
and sympathising with her to the exact degree and in the exact
manner she herself would have chosen.

Never having seen the historic country of Wales or visited
the Lewises in their native land, he yet expresses the fear that
Mary Anne finds herself in "a miserable circle of narrow-
minded people incapable of any generous emotion and any genial
sympathy." This seems a little hard on Wales and the Welsh,
but he was as nearly in love as makes no difference, and because
Wyndham Lewis' relations dared to annoy Mary Anne, Disraeli
would cheerfully have put them to the sword.

Having settled the Lewises once and for all he went on to
tell her all the things she would have loved most to hear. It
is no accusation of insincerity to note that he had a positive
genius for saying exactly the right thing to any woman, as his
correspondence with Queen Victoria alone proves abundantly.
To the bereaved, solitary, and very annoyed Mary Anne it must
have seemed like heaven to be told authoritatively that she
must not indulge in grief or brood over the past, that she was
far too young not to anticipate a second blooming, that her
mother and brother loved her and that the Disraeli family en masse
loved her too.
He himself was for faithful friend and though he lamented